In the Beginning
by Clockwork Butterfly
Summary: A young woman walks down the streets of Midgar carrying a basket of flowers. This was originally the beginning of a now discontinued 'Compilation of Final Fantasy VII' novelization called 'The Jenova Codex.'


The bleak wilderness remained silent. The stars sparkled like grains of salt sinking in a sea of neverending darkness. Their voices had long since been drowned forever in the eternal depths of the chasm in which they silently fell. A cruel metaphor for mankind, only a few amongst the wide reaches of space had the ability to challenge the darkness from which they were born. And even they were now sinking, unable to even utter a word against their own fates. They were struggling to keep from being swallowed by the dark abyss of space. 

Something emerged from the waters. Its emerald light challenged the darkness, forming a giant fissure at its core. Its light intensified further, diminishing the difference between the already dim starlight and the darkness of the abyss.

Like a black hole, this new light drew together the remainder of its power, as if to shatter the darkness for good. Its great voice called for strength against the blackness of space. A wave of green energy channeled slowly towards the fissure, followed by others. Five immense emerald waves flowed together, each on a different path towards the same destination. Finally, they converged.

Grasping its immense strength, the emerald core cried out in a great voice unparalleled against the silence of space. As star, wave, and darkness alike quickly collapsed upon each other, a vast supernova enveloped them all and shattered just as quickly into a myriad of infinitesimal emerald shards, floating like fireflies through the darkness of eternity...

Emerald shards... Floating through eternity... Endless... Timeless... Limitless...

Something emerged from the void. The emerald shards cast their gentle light on the pale face of a young girl. Her brown hair rained bangs and braids down each side of her face, a striking contrast to her milky skin. She had bent down for a better look at the emerald lights that danced in the air before her.

She blinked twice, as a slight breeze took both her bangs and the shards of emerald in its wake. The wisdom set deep behind her eyes saw everything and nothing all at once. Deep in thought, only the Planet knew what had secretly troubled her this night. She sighed, and blinked her green eyes once again. Rising to her feet, she clasped her hands, bowing slightly, as if to offer a silent prayer to the Planet itself.

Suddenly, the woman once again became aware of the harsh reality that truly surrounded her. The side of the Intellect Midgar bookstore materialized before her as if it had always been there. She silently watched the faulty power generator release small bubbles of green Makō energy into the soft breeze.

She was forced to remember where she was, though not by choice. Sector Eight. She eyed the generator and the lights that surrounded it one final time. The bookstore was closed now, and they would probably repair it as soon as they opened in the morning. She quickly looked to the left as if she had divined the correct path from the scattering shards of Makō energy. But she knew this labyrinth contained an entrance but no exit. Escape was a futile thought, rooted only in false hope. She was as much a prisoner as anyone else in the city. The prisoner in a dying country, ruled by a dying tyrant, the only one spared from his own infernal web. However, the girl possessed a lone advantage over the majority. She knew that she was a prisoner.

As if nothing were wrong, as if sins flew not as often as the winds themselves, her left arm fell naturally back to its side. The groove of her right elbow still held the precious flower basket she carried in place. She began to walk peacefully down the dark alleyway into which she had strayed, her simple pink dress wavering with even the slightest movement of her graceful legs. The alleyway was filled with similar power generators for all the adjacent shops, but only one was faulty at this time. Little did she know that the bookstore's generator would never be fixed.

At the mouth of the alley, the woman stopped quickly as a truck shot past her on the converging street. Her deep secrets once again came to mind as they paralyzed her booted feet at the very edge of Midgar 8th Street. She watched an automobile zoom by and several people on foot, but with different eyes than those that had stared at the power generator. Some headed to Goblin's Bar, others to Les Marroniers, neither of which closed until dawn.

Another car and a Midgar's Motor Services truck passed the young girl. What a dangerous world this was, where everyone around her had some hidden agenda that could not wait. Even at seven past midnight, everyone had somewhere to be, and they had to be there yesterday. Her eyes darted quickly past the immense Chocobo King Item Shop, under the great Sector Eight arch, past the giant advertisement for the play Loveless on the twenty-fifth, and out into what little remained of the starless sky.

One could never see the sky from within Midgar, starless as it was. The great Shin-Ra Electric Power Company Headquarters at the core of Midgar towered high enough to eternally eclipse the pale moon, and from the eight power reactors equally spaced around the city seeped enough green Makō smoke to keep the darkness of the sky at bay.

This was the great labyrinth known as Midgar.


End file.
